sweet mystery
by distorted innocence
Summary: My heart falls apart at the moment that I start to question you, but I've seen what it means for a heart to be free. —NinaOC.


_"My heart falls apart at the moment I start to question you, but I've seen what it means for a heart to be free."_

_—Sweet Mystery, Shannon LaBrie_

* * *

They meet in an ice cream parlor during the winter; no one else is there because it's a cold day and no one sane wants ice cream. She's crying silently at her table in the corner, and she accidentally snaps her plastic spoon in half with her tight grip. He comes over with a new spoon and an attempt at sympathy.

"I'm not ugly, am I?" she asks abruptly as she digs the spoon into her ice cream without so much as a thank-you.

She's anything but ugly, he thinks, but he knows from experience she would assume he's just saying that to make her feel better, not because he believes it, so he goes with a simple, "No."

She makes an odd little hiccuping sound and chokes out, "We—my school has a dance tomorrow—no one's taking me—my sister says it's because I'm ugly, and I _am, _no wonder people just run away at the very thought of taking me—_I don't want to go_ alone."

Everything spills out in fragments, and they return in fragments when he says he'll take her.

* * *

Even when she is really and truly beautiful (in her book) and he can't recognize her ("What happened?" "Oh, do I look different?"), she doesn't forget him. She comes back to him and says, "Thank you."

He fell in love with winter, but summer stands before him. "For what?"

"Taking me to the dance." She tilts her head and smiles, her hair falling around her face so he can't see her eyes. "It made people notice me." Never mind that he noticed her and isn't that what matters? "And it was fun."

He just nods as his glasses slide downwards, trying to resist the urge to return to his book. He pretends his heart isn't speeding up against the will because the ice cream girl is in her.

"I think you deserve a reward," she breathes, and she's trying to be provocative and she _is, _his brain wants her but his heart doesn't. She leans closer, her hands tracing patterns on the cover of the book. "Maybe we should hang out sometime."

Against his will, he says yes, and before he knows it, the label of _boyfriend _has been slapped on him.

* * *

"That girl's bad for you," his friend tells him with a wrinkle of his nose, like she wasn't twining her fingers in his collars the other day and he wasn't staring at her lips. "She's too superficial."

He raises an eyebrow, but his defense comes hissing through his teeth, angry and feral. "You don't know her."

"Look," his friend responds, jamming a bookmark between the pages of his book. "Nina Callas, pardon my French, is a whore, and the fact she's slept with at least five people at _thirteen _before ever dating you is just plain wrong."

He knows that—the odd noises she makes sometimes can wake up a neighborhood. Still, he has to resist the urge to punch his friend in the nose, because she must need it, she has to have a _reason, _and you don't just call a girl that. Particularly not your friend's girlfriend.

And his defense?

"She's beautiful."

He's disgusted with himself (_she's superficial? You're the superficial one_), but at the same time, he is in love with her, and if this is going to be an episode of Twilight, so be it.

* * *

Sometimes, the girl from the ice cream parlor shows up again, and this is what he holds onto. There's something modestly beautiful about Nina Callas, who cries over ice cream. She traces stars on the ceiling with him one night, and he's sleeping with her, except not in _that _way—they're just sharing a bed at a two-people sleepover, two layers of clothing between them, and it's innocent and not at all "_people noticed me._"

"Sometimes," she confesses to him, rolling over in a tangle of blankets, "I want to eat ice cream again." There's a slight swallowing sound. "But that means gaining weight."

This is just horribly wrong, he thinks as soon as he processes the words, and he realizes he hasn't seen her touch a carton of ice cream in weeks. It's like the girl in this bed is not summer and not winter, she's a minute before a solstice and he still loves this. It's the closest he can get and that's what he'll do.

"You know," she says drowsily when he doesn't reply. "Celia says you should get contacts." She touches the glasses on his nose, and he realizes he forgot to take them off. She senses him tensing up and giggles. "There's no way I'd want you to do that. She also says I should break up with you 'cause you're a dork." She runs her fingers through his hair, and for a moment it's provocative, like she still thinks he'd like that (and maybe he does, but he's a teenage boy—well, his excuses aren't very good). Then it's just innocent and she lapses into sleep.

It's two past midnight before he falls asleep, too; his glasses are still on and he dreams of the Nina he doesn't know leaving. Even then, the idea is unbearable.

* * *

One night, he finds her drunk, stumbling down the street. Her words are slurred, like melted glass sticking to each other, instead of jagged fragments. A ditzy giggle escapes her lips when he wants to know what the hell she's doing, and a red plastic cup is in her hand, brown liquid slopping over the sides.

"Nina, what have you been drinking?" He peers into her face, half-expecting to see dilated pupils. She waves him off, still giggling, and says his name wrong.

"Did you know I'm going to Westchester tomorrow?"

He guides her over to the park bench where he'd been sitting, only half-listening; he's never heard of Westchester. "No, where?"

"My cousin Alicia lives there," she slurs, and he remembers that—a mostly English-speaking girl with glossy dark hair and an attitude that somewhat intimidated him. Really, though, he hadn't paid much attention to her. "I'm going there for an en-ti-er semester." She grins up at him, her mouth looking a little lopsided.

_She's going to be gone for a semester, and she told me _one day before.

He takes her to her house, one arm of hers slung over his shoulder because her hand-eye coordination is currently nonexistent. Her mother doesn't even scold her, and he knows this has happened before, but she's too young (_what are you, her father?_), _she's too young. _She tries to kiss him, but a drunken kiss never means anything, so he just withdraws.

When she's driven to the airport the next day, she leaves a doubtful boy behind.

* * *

And then something surprising happens while Nina's gone—he has fun. A lot of it. For the first time in a while, he feels like he's truly living. His friends half-expect him to be moping around the house constantly, so they've prepared plans to drag him out, that turns out not to be necessary.

He eats as much ice cream as humanly possible, something she never did anymore with him because of _calories. _He watches movies and reads books and talks to friends, and through it all, he doesn't find that he misses Nina.

He wonders what this means. Does he still love her?

* * *

She comes back early, tears streaking her face, and, well. _She comes back._

The day after she lands at the airport, he wakes up to five messages on his phone and hysterical sobs in his voicemail—_call me back, call me back, call me back _now. The final message asks him to meet her at the parlor, and when he gets there, she's sniffling into a bowl of chocolate ice cream. There's two spoons stuck into the bowl.

She's so glad to see him, she kisses him in front of the three other people _and _the cashier. She tastes of chocolate and sugar, unfamiliar but _familiar _because _he hasn't had it since winter._

"Am I still beautiful?" she asks him.

There's a bandage on her arm, no makeup on her face, and she hasn't brushed her hair, not to mention her clothes look like they're from when she was nine years old, only larger.

"Yeah."

She cries over her ice cream, hiccuping out the whole story, about how she's been stealing and no one likes her and her sisters _hate her, _and she was basically banished from Westchester, and—

Well, he can't say he has any sympathy for her behavior, but he loves her anyway. If the ice cream girl is going to be a crying one for the next century, he'll take her.

* * *

"Why did you change?" he asks, watching her as she flits around her room. Her eyes are red and bloodshot, and it's nearly bare because her sisters have taken everything back and then some. She's shoving her old clothes onto hangers and sticking them into her closet until she can find better ones.

"It's—it's not worth it stealing," she says finally. "Not. . .not what they did to me." There's still a bruise on her cheek that he's been careful not to touch, and she's thrown her mirror out simply because of self-consciousness. "I was a bitch to them." She glances over. "I guess to you, too."

He nods, brushing dust off the floors, and she asks, "Did you ever know I love you?"

_No, not quite._ "Yes."

She just smiles, and fragment by fragment, she returns to him.

* * *

_So, I've only read the first four Clique books, and also note that while Nina's style of speaking is probably different, she would sound different in another language based on how well she knows it. Other than that, I can't characterize and everything else is my fault._

_I hope you enjoyed._


End file.
